Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: Two New Myth-Busting Books Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/two_new_myth_busting_books#4891 Post contents: Mmm. As usual, Professor Gottfried compels me arduously to think and to re-think, even if I don't agree with him on all points. The neocons shot themselves in the foot by their virtual lynching of Gottfried, because continuing to engage with such a formidable adversary could have toughened, as well as clarified, their impoverished minds, not to mention perhaps prompting them to recover from their moral bankruptcy. As for this bit: "In a series of decisions between the 18030’s and 1860s, Taney tried to reverse this expression of “constitutional nationalism,” by returning commercial and regulatory powers to the states..." ...well, yes he did, and he might have been right about some things. But I disagree with the WAY he reaffirmed at least one power of the states, in his most infamous opinion, "Scott V Sanford" (the Dred Scott case.) In it, he opined that a "Black" slave AND/OR a descendant of slaves were not necessarily citizens of the United States (that argument, I reluctantly admit, had some merit as a LEGAL argument at that time), but he did so by affirming and reifying the concept of "race". (And in that opinion, J. Taney's proferred history of the role Blacks had played in America since the 1700s, was incomplete and dishonest; some Blacks - and their number doesn't matter - fought in George Washington's Army, and that exception alone should have been enough to dissuade Taney from saying CATEGORICALLY that NO Blacks were ever considered part of the USA. Just one Black Swan is enough to refute a categorical definition of all swans as "white.") Now, one paradox I see there - paradoxical vis a vis Prof Gottfried's very justifiable hostility to various kinds of "racial" entitlements - is that if you really want to put an end to the legal effects of the Cultural Marxists' obsession with "race", then wasn't Justice Taney's opinion part of the problem? (But to be fair, maybe Prof Gottfried disagrees with the WAY in which the Dred Scott decision was written, as I do?) The reason why America has such a "racial" mess today is precisely because of a continuing belief in "race" as something categorically definable. Ah, but on the other hand, I agree that the Warren Court exacerbated and protracted the problem, with its paradoxical LEFT wing belief in "race." In "Brown v Board of Education" (1954, the seminal school-desegregation case), the Court was condescending as hell toward Blacks. Perhaps desegregation was desirable, but the Court's reasoning was stupid and - to some Blacks - even offensive. How? Here's how: Well, when I was a law student and that case came up for discussion, I said I didn't like the reasoning - because the Court said the reason why segregation deprives Blacks of their civil rights is because they're being deprived of the company and society of Whites. The Court assumed that Blacks would be better off if they mixed with Whites more. In class, I said (mockingly), "It's like the Court is saying, 'Hey Boy! Ya gotta hob-nob with us Whites more, and let some o' that good Whiteness rub off on ya!" I was virtually burnt at the stake by my mostly White classmates - while the only classmate who agreed with me was a Black one. He also found the Court's reasoning offensive and condescending, for the same reasons I did. I'm against "racial" segregation, and against any and all laws which even acknowledge "race". Consequently some on the Left call me a "racist", while some on the Right call me "politically correct". But the truth is never between two opposites, but above them. Ah, but if we ever totally jettisoned the very concept of "race", then it would pull the rug out from under opportunistic hacks of the Left AND Right! Sent at: 2008 05 16